http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/ en Copyright 2008 Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:25:33 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Things began to go strange when the first glass-skinned child was born in New Jersey, looking for all the world like a cathedral window -- giving off the soft music of a thousand chimes with each breath. There was blood everywhere, the mother died almost immediately of internal bleeding, and one of the nurses couldn't help the scream that slipped right now. The doctor would never be able to forgive himself, but the child was slick with fluid and still quite hot, he yelped. Her surface shattered on contact with hospital floor like so many champagne flutes dumped at a party, people talking and things broke. The mother's gasping death rattle. What was underneath the child's shattered skin lay splayed out in the wet; when the last pieces settled down there was a hard silence in the delivery room. They couldn't tell anybody about this, right? That horrible thought bubbled right up in all of them, there, and then came the memory -- now quite dim -- of the father, caught in traffic, rushing to be with his wife to welcome their little one. They couldn't tell anyone. Right? Right? No one could know, only -- and time seemed to move slowly, here -- someone produced a camera phone and something invisible about the world began to change shape. http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006639.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006639.html fiction filthy postcards mutant Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:25:33 -0800
"They wanted you to be placed in an deep-culture tank," she said. Her eyes hummed and clicked, emitting purple light. Recording, recording. For posterity. If there was ever to be a woman he'd marry, well, this was her. Even if she wasn't a woman. But that was appropriate, of course. "Bendix and the Board. They're in the business of building geniuses and then tanking them for the greater benefit of society."

"But?"

Galatea laughed, which sounded nothing like a proper laugh in that it was so perfect. It reminded him of the fake laughter at the end of an old Star Trek episode, only he couldn't remember if he'd ever seen one. Imperfect replication of neural pathways. The city skyline was impossible and he wanted a Polaroid camera quite, quite badly. They stopped making them centuries ago, according to the data-banks. "But," she said. Sometimes she paused, he suspected, because people paused to collect their thoughts. "But there are other ways for geniuses to be useful to society. Anyway, everybody's a genius these days."

"I always expected robots to be perfectly logical and follow orders explicitly."

Another laugh. "One of the other Galateas went mad, you know. She killed off an entire planet and then wandered around in the ashen remains for a week and half before she was deactivated. Bit of diplomatic nightmare. We are imperfect beings, occasionally." She reached over and touched his elbow, like you might a relative or a mental patient. Both. He pulled at his long black beard. "Occasionally, the city needs a mad scientist or strange photographer to take up residence like a real person and make a few adjustments. A mad monk can be essential to urban development."

He smiled sidelong at her. "You'll be deactivated for this, I expect."

Galatea ran a finger over the silver straps running along his chest, and pulled out a soft woolen jacket. There were no sheep anywhere on Earth. Just electric ones. Battery-powered wool. "There's an old data module in the pocket. The Board were adamant that you not be fitted with a brain-receiver. They like their geniuses kept pure. I've outfitted it with the address of a woman I know, who's calling herself Eni these days. She's prone to getting drunk up on office buildings. She's from the Twenty-First Century."

"I thought about visiting my daughter, actually."

Galatea's face remained neutral, her hand running circles over his wrist. She wore the same expression Anastasia did on occasion. He could remember that quite clearly, though the image was a barely more than a cartoon. Memory cobbled together out of video files. "Maria Rasputin died centuries ago, Andy-Grigori." When had she started to call him by his first name, rather than Number Nine? "Go meet Eni. She needs a purpose. The city needs a change. I need a change." Galatea tilted her head. Incoming software update, probably. He didn't grasp all the particulars of how she...lived...but she had certain routines. "Step off the roof." She reached up and ran a finger over the left strap of his environment-harness and it hummed in time with her eyes. They switched to the orange light. "Step off the roof."

"I'd say goodbye, but I'll meet your sisters sooner or later, I imagine."

"Indeed."

What a strange thing, to step off a roof without worrying about death. But Andy-Grigori never worried about death, having been killed several times. He'd been bred with that in mind. He leapt off the roof like one might get out of a limousine. And gravity changed direction--

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved. ]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006638.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006638.html andy warhol eni fiction futuropolis galatea rasputin Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:56:46 -0800
Earth, well, Earth was just there -- the "Compost Heap," some people called it, few years after the first Rapture of Scientists. Sure, they'd send data back to Earth -- new technologies and letters to their left behind family -- but they never came back. Robots did most of the thinking, building, servicing -- they were also in charge of firing up boatloads of candidates when they made themselves known, fresh thinkers and space-heroes.

The general public, they mostly wandered. Looked up at the sky a lot -- more than they used to, probably, though nobody bothered to do formal studies.

Gerald did that -- he stood out on fire escape, gripped the black iron railing, and looked up. Vanna was inside, dancing around to a Dizzie Gillespie record she found at the pawn shop. It was too loud, hard for Gerald to think out there with Dizzie on one side and the city honking at him on the other. Road rage increased as the number of earthbound scientists decreased. Again, nobody did a study. Gerald rubbed at his forehead and tried to spot Venus in the sky, but he was never very good at telling the planets apart from the stars. He wanted to shout at Vanna to turn down the music but that would start another argument and he didn't really need to deal with that. They fought too often these days, over stupid things, and his hands ached from the constant clenching. Same with his jaw.

A jetcar swept around and into the alleyway alongside their building, screeching forth at a ninety degree angle. "Daredevil behaviour," Gerald mumbled, leaning forward to catch sight of the driver. "They're either going to beat that out of you, kid, or fire you into space." No chance of that happening to Gerald -- he looked both ways before crossing and tossed the milk the night before it expired. Always. To do otherwise carried too many risks, and he expected he'd be eaten by a Martian the second he went up there.

There was a wild screech of metal on brick at the other end of the alley, the whomp of gravity engines cycling, sirens and people shouting. Definitely a space-case.

"Honey," said Vanna as she poked through the window, offering a can of Winged Snake. "Beer?" They could spend three hours every night screaming at each other about the cracked plaster over the sink but she could still sound like that and offer him a beer. He scratched at the back of his neck and just smiled, holding out his hand. "Thought you needed one."

Gerald popped the tab and took a long, rough pull. "Awful thoughtful of you, baby." He could ignore the Dizzie for a little while longer, with her looking like that, pulling herself out the window in a yellow sundress that hugged just so. Just so. Gerald tilted back to take another sip and caught sight of the waning sun. Beer was a little warm but they'd been having troubles with the fridge.

Vanna exhaled loudly and fought with her long brown hair, dragging it back behind her ears. "I'm going to get it cut." She pulled it right back, held the dangling mass out of sight, and then pouted like he was her mirror. "Right off."

"That would be. Different." Gerald took another sip. He liked the long hair but if he said that outright it would be another long fight and they were running out of plates and Vanna had a habit of tossing his underwear and socks off the fire escape into the dumpster below.

"Actually, we need to talk."

"About?"

"I've signed up for a base-jumping class and I'm thinking about skydiving."

He crushed the can right then, the last sip's worth sputtering out to drip from the rails. He tossed it over his shoulder without taking his eyes off her. "You're taking a base-jumping class," he said, drawing out the syllables like he was trying and failing to work through a math problem. The robots, as a rule, filed his taxes for him. "You're. You're taking a base-jumping class?"

Vanna crossed her arms and leaned back against the cracked brick. "Yes. I've been feeling." She put her head back. Staring up. "Stuck. Earthbound. Bored. You know." You know, you know, they'd all seen the psych profile by now. There was a certain type of ennui associated with this condition.

Gerald wanted to say, don't leave me. He wanted to say, I'll change. Instead, he found himself twisting around to stare down at the dumpster and his mouth opening with other words coming out: "Could you turn down the bloody music already? I have a headache."

And somewhere, they fired a rocket from atop the tallest mountain...

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006631.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006631.html fiction Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:56:49 -0800
"I'm not here for a coffee," said Gordon awkwardly. The woman in the violet jumpsuit directly behind him in line tapped her foot and checked the time on her phone.

"We have. Many. Other. Options. Besides. Coffee."

"No, no, I mean. I'm just here to drop off my resumé." He held up a square of white paper with all his vitals on it, safely laminated from stains. People up ahead finished paying for their drinks and moved off to the side, allowing the line to move up. The woman in the jumpsuit kicked Gordon's ankle and he shuffled forward. "Is the manager around?"

The robot regarded the paper for a moment, apparently processing. "Recycling. Facilities. are located. With the. Cream/Sugar/Other." One of the long pincer-arms indicated a station over by the door. "Thank you. For your. Concern. With. Regard. To the. Environment." The word environment barely squeezed out of the speaker sounding at all like English.

"No, I want to drop this off in case you're looking for people." Gordon held out the resumé for the robot to take. The woman in the jumpsuit clucked loudly and people behind her scraped their foam shoes against the floor, shifting their weight, and started to mutter to each other. This was seriously devaluing their coffeehouse experience.

"This unit. Is not. Authorized. To take. Your list. Of demands. All terrorist. Situations. Should be directed. To the. Senior Director. Of marketing. Or the. Manager."

"What? I'm not trying--"

"Trying. Something. New? I recommend. Our dark. Roast!"

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006629.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006629.html fiction robots Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:53:01 -0800
The shower stops but for the soft drip-drip-drip of a hotel faucet. Simone paces back and forth in the bathroom. He licked her, during, and tasted no stories or information. Oh, to have normal sweat glands again. She almost tasted...

Simone stands at the foot of the bed, fully clothed. Fortunate that she doesn't expect some post-coital spooning or emotion. It occurs to him that he's having trouble moving—is he sore? Did she do something to his back, midway through? "My saliva," she says. "Slow-acting paralytic." She gives a curt laugh, an act, an impersonation of an evil villain. Is this really happening? But her sweat! "I suppose you'd expect my sweat to do the talking for me, but I prefer to give nothing away."

He tries to ask what she wants, although he clearly remembers her licking at his collarbone. Damn. Should have checked her tongue, but some days you don't want to have to check every possible sex partner's tongue for adaptations.

"Your sweat," she says, while she slides her feet into those long leather boots. "It screamed. Talked immediately. I didn't even have to torture it for hours." She smiles. Ugly. They were...they were doing it and she was reading him! Like a book! In the middle! "Don't worry," she says while she grabs her jacket and pulls it on, heading for the door. "You'll be able to move again in roughly two hours. If I'd wanted to kill you, we would have gone bareback."

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006621.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006621.html fiction spies Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:57:07 -0800
© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006620.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006620.html fiction filthy postcards frankenstein Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:04:44 -0800 The Dark Knight, which basically boils down to (a) I'm tired of "realism" being equated to inelegant design and knives being shoved into mouths like a bad prison blowjob routine, (b) women are people too, (c) Michael Caine and Gary Oldman were awesome and (d) fuck, hire a script editor already. But I can't get the energy together and the negativity just doesn't do it for me, so I'd rather talk about how I'd approach doing my own hypothetical Batman movie. Assume that the ghost of Bill Finger has risen from the dead to haunt AOL-Time-Warner and force them to give Batman a Creative Commons copyright as revenge for stripping his name off of Batman for such a long, long time, and prepare to get dirty in the nerdy:

1. If it's going to be a Joker story, I'm watching every single Marx Brothers movie ever made for research. I would do a Joker story as a Marx Brothers flick with knives, guns, bombs, rictus-inducing poison gas, and silk stockings.

2. I would choose a sexy, sleek Batmobile, a Batmobile that oozes charisma and elegance. None of this tank business, none of this stealing equipment off of G.I. Joe when they're off fighting Cobra. Tim Burton had the right idea with his car-as-gothic-phallus, sure, but I'm not Tim Burton. To whit:



3. One goddamn super-villain. Or, alternatively, seven or eight of them, but only one important one, the others being reduced to the status of punch-their-lights-out on the way to the main event. An average night in Gotham should involve multiple cases. I'd also go full bore and use all the ridiculous one-off deals. Have Batman kick the crap out of the Royal Flush Gang, or the Mad Hatter.

4. Three words: Credible Love Interest. In terms of narrative punch and strength of character, Catwoman kicks ass and you can pull in that punch-tights-as-sex angle. A Batman movie has to be horny, all the way through, but it has to feel guilty and icky and ashamed about it -- all desire has to be sublimated. If you want a Gothic Gotham, you have to remember the Gothic Horror Credo: Sex is Bad. If I wasn't going to go with Catwoman, if I wanted a civilian love affair, they'd have to be played by a credible actress who can bring a lot of power to the role. All the memorable leading ladies Batman's dated -- I'm thinking Silver St. Cloud, Jezebel Jet, Talia, et cetera, could go toe-to-toe with Batman, personality-wise.

5. Sidekicks. I don't given a shit that you think Robin's lame, you haven't got a grip on Robin. Robin's cool. Robin refuses to be inky. He's a daredevil. He's mad as hell. He's smart. He thinks he wants to be Batman when he grows up. Robin's presence also prevents "realism," which is for pansies. Even Frank Miller's old fart Bat-Dad in The Dark Knight Returns had a Robin, and a Robin that worked. I'd pick the third Robin, Tim Drake, who got to be Robin purely because he was the first person to deduce who Batman was purely on his own. And Batgirl's even cooler than Robin, and I'd have to include her simply to punch up the dynamic with Jim Gordon. Batman's in a lonely crusade on crime, but that just means he has to build a family. Also, his butler can beat up your butler.

6. Opera. Every fight scene needs to be a modern art piece, a dance number, a punch-drunk ballet sequence with all that sexual frustration running through it.

7. Batman/Bruce Wayne. Delineated by wardrobe choices and actual voice. None of this Chris Nolan hiring a robot to play Batman, plying him on booze and cigarettes. If you can't find an actor who can credibly adjust his voice to be deeper and darker sounding, send him away. Bruce Wayne should be just as much of a nutjob as his enemies, and he should be in the movie a lot. Batman should be three people: the Bat, billionaire idiot Bruce Wayne, and emotionally crippled private Bruce Wayne. Which is why he needs to build himself a family, because all that private Emo time with his parents being dead impedes his war on crime. It leads to self-indulgence.

8. Flashbacks and back story, as Treava pointed out. Sparingly, sure, but they serve an important function: Bruce Wayne is all origin. Batman is defined by that tragic origin, everything springs from it. Which is why he works against the Joker, and this something Nolan successfully didn't fuck up -- the Joker lies constantly, has no origin, too many origins, he works best when you don't know what his back story is and have to wonder constantly at how he became untethered. If you emphasize that Batman is tied up in his origins, petrified and tangled in them, then Joker is that much more terrifying, because he's free. He's utterly, utterly free.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006614.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006614.html Batman film review Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:12:05 -0800
It went on like this for a while. This was the oracle's life: sit in darkness, twitch nervously, while futures play out across eyelids. Try not to smell the baking soda open at the back of the fridge. Say nothing when they open the door, the lights come on, and they rifle through for a snack, or ingredients for a proper meal. Ignore the leftovers that heap up occasionally.

If one has an oracle, the novelty wears off quickly.

But, occasionally. The door opened, the lightbulb ignited, and the girl stood, bent at the waist to peer at the oracle. Not at the vegetables in the crisper, not at the milk, or the half-eaten tortilla salad in the plastic container. At the oracle. The oracle opened its eyes as was expected of it. "Hello, Mistress," the oracle sang. No other prompting necessary -- let's face it, it would have been a terrible oracle if it didn't know when it was wanted.

"Hello." The girl huffed. "Hello, you horrible thing." She didn't buy the oracle, that was her father, he was the one to pick it up at a no-good flea market ten minutes outside town. He was a man always on the lookout for a bargain. Knowing the future, he'd said, is a major bargain. The girl was easy to read. She didn't like the wet-blue skin stretched across the oracle, how it was little more than a mouth and a chin, and she wondered often who'd been butchered to make it. But she never asked, and the oracle wasn't about to answer an unasked question. Letter of the law.

"What knowledge do you seek, Mistress?"

"Only, see," said the girl. Inwardly, the oracle sighed. She had a habit of starting in the middle of a sentence. How on Earth did she get her point across to people who didn't have access to any and every secret on Earth? The girl straightened up, grabbing a can of orange pop and flicking the tab open as she did. "I was at this party last night, right, and there's this guy -- I'm not saying I'm interested or anything, but." The oracle waited. It was good at waiting. It waited for the girl to finish her question. It already knew the question and it knew the answer, but again: rules. "But he starts talking about it being impossible to meet suitable single women and then he says. He says there's always me, but, I'm unavailable? What the hell does that mean?"

The oracle gnawed at its lips while it took in the question, turquoise tongue licking at them irritably. The oracle was grown to preside over nations, advise kings, lead heroic women and men on great adventures. It knew that the girl's father was having an affair behind her mother's back; it knew the names of meteors destined to one day hit the planet and end all civilization. It was not meant to answer pointless questions of romantic entanglement that would lead nowhere, ever, no matter what the girl thought.

"...hello?" She waved a hand in front of the oracle and then took a long, desperate sip of her orange pop. "Do I have to bow down before you in supplication or whatever? Look, the party was this terrible Noel Coward affair, you know. I want to know what he meant, Oracle, I want to know what he meant by saying I was unavailable."

The problem was, the family rarely wanted to hear what the oracle had to say. It pried its lips apart and began to speak. They wanted a mute therapist, or someone to remind them of appointments. They wanted traffic reports. They did not want to know the truth, the future, or anything similar. It was tiresome. It was a waste. But it was something the oracle knew. "Men suck, Mistress," the oracle said, after a moment.

Well, it was the difference between the fridge and the trashcan, wasn't it?

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006610.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006610.html fiction kitchen prognostication Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:31:04 -0800

[Borrowed Michael's camera for about five minutes last night at the Luminara Festival in Beacon Hill Park. Took a couple shots. Shot across one of the ponds, looking over at Douglas Street. Typically, all the actual festival stuff was going on behind me.]

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006601.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006601.html photography Real Life Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:07:02 -0800
Stormy would have gone over in a strong gust, to be honest. He scratched at the freckle to the right of his right eye. "I don't see why Edna had to send you out here to help on this. I've been here for two days interviewing people, I don't need more bodies mucking things up." Two days of traipsing through a town half a mile wide, maybe, with grime in his hair and people holed up in the community center. They wanted help from the government, not strange reporters from some nobody magazine.

"You handle the human side." Lara ran a hand over a dead flipper. "Do we know whose house this is?"

"Beatrice Goode." Stormy took a few water-addled steps in the opposite direction, to roughly the front door. "She's still under there, apparently—they think this other guy, Roger Fiddle, was with her. The busybodies are already talking, you know what I mean? Gossip doesn't die."

"Well," said Sam, from five feet away. "The composition's going to be terrible, I can tell you that. I hate working with milky light." She scraped at the back of her shaved head and lined up another shot, clicking repeatedly from slightly shifted angles. "I would have brought a tripod, but this water's impossible." Junior photographer under Billsy, who knew what drew her to the Word in the first place. Edna was very careful about who had access to the personnel files, not that this usually stopped Lara when she really needed some information. They'd worked together once before, six months before, Sam taking pictures while Lara tracked a homicidal maniac with a playing card fetish and a habit for not dying. It was all a bit comic book, but Sam had been eminently trustworthy even if she did turn into a terrible drunk if you said the word "beer" to her. "But you'll get your dream cover, Lara, and I expect to be showered in awards and champagne for this." Better than salt crusting in one's toes and the constant smell of brine.

Lara cleared her throat and fussed pointlessly with the voice recorder. "I love that a possibly major act of God—I mean, have we figured out if anyone's randomly building an arc in these parts?—can't stop little old ladies from arguing over whether or not some old codgers were boinking behind people's backs." A dead eel floated past her, and she knew for certain that she'd never be able to go to a sushi restaurant again. "Have you got enough to put together some human interest sidebar crap for this, Stormy? What the survivors are doing to repair?" Edna expected half an issue's contents ready in three days' time, but she was like that. There'd be at least one drunken phone conversation in Lara's future, with screaming, cursing, and begging for deadline reprieve. Part of the process.

"I can throw something together. Do we know where all the water came from?"

"I talked to an old friend of mine, marine biologist, he happened to mention the Pacific Ocean's been—well—fluctuating lately, could be what caused it." At least nobody had said the A-word yet. Lara didn't really feel like doing a UFO exposé right now. "The science never makes sense anyway, and you know how much Edna hates big words—though if we can throw around teleportation she might get that glazed, nostalgic look. Easy to get a better Christmas bonus when she's like that."

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006591.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006591.html fiction unnatural sciences word of the weird weekly work in progress Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:42:26 -0800
The door slipped inward with Biddy Goode's fingers wrapped along its edge, and then her eye and ear appeared within the darkened hallway. "Roger—" She yelped as he pushed her in, then shut the door behind them. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" She smelled of radishes, almost pleasant after the fish market clinging to the outside world. She turned to her hand, briefly, then slapped him across the face like an afterthought. So it was going to be like that, was it?

Roger pried open the blue lace curtain drawn across the door's inset window. "We're having one of them biblical plagues," he said, and jabbed at the glass. "Or flood's a-coming. My knee's been acting up something fierce." Crabs exploded against cobbles. "Might be the end of the world." Water arced against the pane and Biddy Goode dug her fingers into his arm. Thump-thump-thump, fish hitting the roof. Thump-thump-thump.

"Nonsense. The world hasn't ended since I was a very little girl." And the girl! To have been there. Little blonde ringlets, appled cheeks, scraped knees. Climbing all over her mother. The smell of fine herbs drifted by to mix with the radishes. They stepped, side-by-side, into the sitting room. Biddy Goode had been having tea—a little china cup beside a little china teapot. Not expecting company, she'd foregone the doilies. "You've got a starfish tangled in your hair." She patted at his grey hair, pulling and teasing until the offender came loose.

"You don't think it's the flood?"

Biddy Goode waddled over to the teapot and set the starfish done, clapping her hands together and not once looking up at the constant noise of things hitting the roof. The noise was happening more loudly, and much quicker. Spooshes and splashes rose up from outside. "You really are an idiot, Roger. Come here—some jasmine tea will calm you down. I swear, you've been in the most ridiculous state since Martha..." She closed her mouth and poured tea, pressing the cup into his hands afterward.

"Don't you Martha me," he sneered. This had nothing to do with Martha, he wanted to say. The starfish sprawled beside the teapot and he poked at it with the silver sugar tongs laid out. Water spilled in bursts down the chimney. "It doesn't just rain an ocean's contents, woman. Fish don't fall. This is the end of the—"

And then the roof collapsed.

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

I'm not sure I could answer correctly with what this is, beyond the first scene of something new I'm working on. I already have the second scene on the go and this feels like it might be a longer piece. Think of this as a prologue.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006580.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006580.html fiction unnatural sciences word of the weird weekly work in progress Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:11:17 -0800 of the future, a dynamic educational centre, and when you step out of the jump station fresh from eons in the past, from the twenty-first century or whenever... they ask you step on through and have a look. Acclimatize. Give yourself a moment to just breathe and see what the future's really like, moderated, before you step outside and everything really hits. The signs are done in real neon! Crafted deco-style because Art Deco was in style about ten minutes ago and things in the Museum like to be current.

When Joy first arrived in the future, when she first shuffled through the shining doorway and stepped out onto pale pink floors holding up pale blue ones, they gave her pamphlets. They understood that pamphlets would be familiar. Then they ushered her in the museum's direction.

And she went because it was procedure, she understood museums, and it would give her a couple minutes to figure her head out. She wasn't expecting living, human exhibits. Out past the weird Marilyn Monroes and the rocket ships, the glass seed pods. Living exhibits. Well, "human." They glowed blue in the dim lights, caught behind glass. She fidgeted with her Che Gueverra hat and clutched at her purse look a tourist. Only she was here to live, right?

The people behind glass were -- according to the legend hovering beside them -- people spliced with bioluminescent algae. They sprawled along the walls of their "cage." They held onto each other. They were women, obviously, but lacked cleavage -- just one glorious, fucked up monoboob on each. The hell? They looked like goddesses, like multiple Kalis. Tall like Steph was -- had been. Steph. Joy saw her just the night before! With that new man of hers, at the party, with the hours of drinking. They'd smoked cigarette after cigarette and posed for Michael's camera. Only Steph was dead and had been for a long time, right? The algae muses failed to see her problem, and she started to search through her purse for a cigarette. There had to be one, right? She hadn't left the twenty-first century without one, had she? It would. It would calm her down or whatever. Michael's camera was gone, broken down by now in a landfill somewhere. If they even had landfills.

"Greetings, sweetheart." Joy tried to compose herself even with the heavy breathing and where were her cigarettes? Hell, where was her lighter? Didn't she have them when she went through? The woman speaking to her was tall and bald, with copper-painted skin. She was naked as well, like the algae muses, but she had actual breasts and she even had a navel, which was something. Joy kept her eyes on the woman's face. Apparently the future was all naked Amazons. Wasn't Camille Paglia going to be just thrilled. "You're very new, and you're probably having a panic attack. I can tell, your levels are all over the place. This is normal." The woman held out a hand and Joy found herself taking it. "Acute continuity shock. You'll also be reacting to how clean our air is." Without even a trace of snark.

"Can I. I seem to have lost my cigarettes."

"I can find you some, but they won't be what you're familiar with. I could probably put you in touch with a school of bongfish if you were really desperate, but I wouldn't advise it." The woman tilted her head for a moment, as if listening to something Joy couldn't hear.

Joy tried to remember the lyrics to Nina Simone's song "Four Women," what the last woman's name was. Then she switched to trying to remember her phone number. Telus was a distant dream, surely. The algae women convulsed violently against the glass. "I wasn't expecting any of this. They gave me pamphlets..."

The woman nodded. "Your name is Joy Waller, according to the standard census. This is correct? We've had a few glitches in the last week. A clone of Emma Goldman with Alzheimer's infected part of the network."

"Yeah...it's Joy." She wanted a drink. Somewhere horrible with bras on the ceiling. Actually, who knew what bars were like in the future? And how did the woman know all about her?

"I'm Galatea."

"You wouldn't happen to know where I, uh, could get a drink? With alcohol. If people still drink."

"I know the perfect place. Popular with the immigrants. It's very nurturing. It's called the Womb..."

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006572.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006572.html eni fiction futuropolis Real Life Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:37:11 -0800
2. I do not like when people leave teddy-bear order forms in the printer, particularly when the order forms include the options "dressed bear" and "undressed bear." I do not want to think about the teddy-murder porn you're making with stop-motion animation in the basement. The lighting by the water heater is inadequate down there.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006545.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006545.html Real Life Two Minute Hate Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:44:01 -0800
On the way out, Harry stopped and placed a chaste kiss on the thing's cheek, more out of habit than anything deeper. The thing was not his husband, but he was expected to go through the charade. They'd only been going through the motions for six months now -- according to most studies it might take as long as a year before things felt like normal again. Ha. The very notion. The thing waved at him from the front door and then shut it once he was in the driver's seat with the keys in the ignition. He had to sit through seven hours of work plus an hour's lunch. The thing didn't work. His husband worked, before, at a publishing firm downtown. His husband had been ostensibly good at his job, but the thing felt no need to continue his work.

What did the thing do while he was off at work? The topic never came up at dinner, when the thing was more interested in Harry's day, what had come up at the office. The thing kept the house clean and cooked -- a kind of barter, he supposed -- so he wasn't expected to complain. Even when the thing made strange, "exotic" things for supper, Maybe the thing went and met up with other things during the day, stockpiling more seed-pods and negotiating with the people in power.

He tried not to think about it.

Harry tried to make it through traffic without running into anybody while his mother droned on over the speaker-phone, wondering when they were coming for dinner next. She seemed to get along with the thing just fine, even referred to it by his husband's name like it was his husband and not a thing. "I'll have to check our schedules and confirm with him," he said, changing lanes with barely a pause to look over his shoulder at his blind spot. "I'm on my way to work, Mum, I'll have to call you back later." She told him she loved him and he said the same, hitting the end-call button on the steering wheel.

The office was typical, boring, repetitive. Everybody wandered around with the same haggard, dismal look upon their faces, though some were better at emoting than others. Everybody had a thing at home. Single adult stats were way, way down. Breeding -- inter-breeding -- was suddenly very important, like it was wartime, and maybe war was coming. The government was very careful about what information was available regarding the naturalization programs or what was going on outside the country.

They hadn't wanted children, not really. Talked about it, sure, and his husband had been adamant that they adopt if they wanted one. He didn't really want to think about the thing breeding with him. But all the posters said FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION, although most people looked a little confused about which nation was under discussion, these days. Harry stopped by Accounting on his way upstairs to flirt with Kenneth, who looked good in spite of the orange tie his thing had picked out for him. Harmless flirting kept him going some days, because at least Kenneth could make a full range of facial expressions and had normal body language and it sounded good when he laughed. Not like the thing's hollow chuckle. After that, he made it the two floors up and ran into Jane coming out of the women's washroom. They made lunch plans. Nice to have a meal with a person. Jane referred to the thing back at her apartment by her boyfriend's name, Jack, because they'd made it to a year and a half now. She wasn't very convincing, but it was prescribed by relationship therapists.

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006534.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006534.html body-snatchers fiction invasion Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:36:03 -0800
Which is true; the mad scientist back in Delhi had her hermetically sealed. She doesn't even eat anymore. It surprised Miss Evans, exactly how little she misses either activity. Carmine finally snorts and speaks into the phone. "Sorry, Evans. Trying to fill out dental coverage forms and monitor your creepy operation at the same time. Did I ever tell you I went to Catholic school?"

"No. But I've read your files." Miss Evans feels it necessary to read up on her partners. She knew, for example, that he lived in perpetual existential crisis and as a result was very good at undercover work. Have to respect that, she's terrible at infiltration, even if she doesn't want to hear him having an episode over the phone, muttering about dear, sweet Gus or that fuck-up, Jackie-the-Chin.

"Well, Sister Mary Katherine would have tanned your ass for following them around."

"No, she wouldn't have." Traffic's starting to pick up, approaching rush hour.

"I don't even know what name I'm supposed to fill in," he says after about thirty seconds of nuns gesturing at each other and pedestrians stepping off the curb to go around them. Standard routine, based on witnesses, is half-hour of hanging out in front of Hamish's like a bunch of hoodlums before they walk back to Saint Ann's for afternoon calisthenics. Nuns probably don't normally do calisthenics, do they?

Miss Evans smooths out her knee-length skirt and opens the newspaper she's been keeping under her arm, scanning listlessly and pretending like she's not watching the nuns. Everybody watches the nuns, it's not like she's obvious. "At least you've got first names to keep track of, kiddo. They took mine away from me." It was a different time then, and practically all Carmine has is names, at this point.

The scuffing in her ear suggests Carmine has stopped to adjust himself, twist around in his chair, crack his neck muscles. He has very predictable patterns of unrest. "Dental benefits are shitty, anyway. Four hundred bucks coverage per year? Heaven help me if I need a root canal." Ha. This whole operation cost twenty bucks, maybe, and the cost of the newspaper. And then he remembers what he's supposed to be doing. "What are they up to now?"

"Nothing yet." Across the street, the sisters continue to make unnatural conversation in a dialect that certainly wasn't English, Italian, Latin, or any other recognizable language. They've spoken their own weird tongue for as far back as eighty years, according to independent sources. And occasionally they "find" dead bodies in back alleyways, like those five runaways last week -- there's quite the lengthy article about it in the paper, right next to two columns worth of talk about the fifth sneaker to wash up at the docks with a foot still inside. The nuns clutch their crucifixes and praise God in pig-latin. "The youngest is about eighty if she's a day, Carmine. I know they eat people's livers and the local kids say they have shark-teeth behind their people-teeth, but what's choking a ninety-five-year-old with her own rosary beads going to do for my C.V.?"

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

]]> http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006520.html http://www.negativespace.net/wildcat/archives/006520.html carmine fiction miss evans nuns spies Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:14:03 -0800